


Dornish Red/The Bull

by elephant_eyelash



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Backstory, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Gen, Murder, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 16:22:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephant_eyelash/pseuds/elephant_eyelash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story based on (even more) speculation about Gendry's mother, his childhood, and so on. Written originally as a giftfic on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dornish Red/The Bull

**Author's Note:**

> I've attempted here to be as canonical as possible but -as happens when trying to elaborate upon minor characters- a certain amount of conjecture is always involved.

 In the bottom floor of a whitewashed house in Flea Bottom was a boy who, if circumstances were different, would have been the prince of all the Seven Kingdoms. But, as things stood, he was just the son of a whore. A pretty whore, one of the prettiest in Flea Bottom, once. She had had bright blonde hair let loose round her shoulders and a mouth sweet as cherries.

But she was old, now. She had been six and ten when the boy came. He was a heavy burden on her small body (and with that, he was so like his father that she hated him before he even took his first breath). She would watch him as his face grew pink and raw with crying until he learnt. Then at night Master Tyne would give the boy to his mother where all the other babies went while their mothers worked, growing dirty and sore in Muddy Way and perfumed with the scent of fish and men.

Tonight she would be busy, she knew, because a tourney had come. Before Him and the boy she would have chanced herself with a few of the noble sorts. But now she knew she would be faced with the servants, the lowlings. If only they knew, she thought, who they touched. She had once been His. He had watched as she undressed with a devotion that was supposed to be reserved for the love of the Seven. She had learnt the imperfections in his body and had made him human, made him nothing more than flesh.

The boy traced patterns in the floor with his finger. She turned to look at him.

“You going to the tourney?” She asked. She never used his name.

He sighed. “No. Why?”

“Because….” She licked her lips, bent down to face him. “Your father’s there.”

He concentrated very hard on keeping his face still, but she laughed because his eyes betrayed everything.

“What’s his name?” He asked.

She shrugged. “Can’t remember.”

He knew it was a lie, could feel it. “I don’t believe you.”

Her hand as it flew across his cheek was a well-rehearsed motion, but he hated how, after all this time, it still stung. “Call your mother a liar, eh?” She said, making sure he could feel the heat of the words against his face. “I lie to protect you, you know?” She straightened. “Fine, if you want to know, you can know…” She folded her arms. “But it’ll cost you.”

He hesitated. Her eyes were bright and playful and dangerous. But there was a hunger within him she had awakened and that he was desperate to satisfy. “What do you want?”

She twisted her lips, thinking. She was making him wait. “I quite fancy a bottle of Dornish Red. I used to sit on your father’s lap and drink it, you know. It was so sweet, so rich…” Her voice became far-away and sad for a second. “But I haven’t had it in years. They’ll have plenty of it at the tourney. They won’t mind one going missing.”

He paused. “Stealing’s wrong.”

“By the Seven, boy, you’re soft.” She laughed, twirling in her skirts like a girl and combing her hair with her fingers. “Have you looked outside? Where you think you live, boy, in the Red Keep? You’ll starve if you don’t steal.” Her voice became deeper. “And don’t you want to know who your father is? Hm?”

He wriggled a little. He knew a great many thieves, of course, but he didn’t like them. Most of the children of Flea Bottom had lifted a purse at one time or another. But a couple of years ago they brought a thief to hang in Fishmonger’s Square as they did sometimes to put fear into the people. Gendry had known the man by sight, but not his name. By the time he was on the platform he looked gaunt and his eyes stared unblinking into the sun as if he was already dead. And Gendry felt as if the rope was tightening around his neck, could feel the fibres stab into his skin, and his mouth ran dry as stone. Since then he had dreamt often of rope, rope that became like a serpent and chased him throughout the alleyways of Flea Bottom until it sprouted up like a bloom and engulfed him.

So he begged. It made his face burn and his heart twist in his chest but he did it. He asked the bakers for stale bread and the fruitmongers for bruised fruit and they were kind, often, because he looked especially thin being as tall as he was. His mother, of course, had light, deft fingers. Often she lifted the purses of her ‘visitors’ and would come back home, every step ringing like a bell with the sound of coins. But the coins would go quickly to the tavern and she would come back home as penniless as ever.

Sometimes the wine coursed through her veins and it would make her sing to him, and the sound to Gendry felt as bright as gold. She’d sing all kinds of songs, and well: his favourites were the ones about knights and dragons and brave things. But sometimes in the middle of songs her voice would break and she would slump to the floor and hiccup through  _The Mother’s Tears._

“It was  _Two Hearts That Beat as One_ I was singing when he found me and told me how pretty I was.” She said once, pressing her head against the wall, face thin. Gendry knew always who ‘he’ was: his father. She hated him, but Gendry imagined him often as one of the heroes in the songs she sang with marvellous armour and rich black hair like his.

She was singing as they entered the tourney grounds. Many of the whores sang songs that were individual to each one. They were always carefully crafted, for a man could seek out a particular woman by recognising her song.

“ _Hey, hey, hallo, come young and old_

_For here’s a pretty one_

_With no riches of gold…”_

Gendry followed a few steps behind. Her voice melted into the other sounds of the camp: the fluttering of canvas, the sound of metal on metal, the sizzle of cookpots. Soon a man noticed her, and they began haggling. He had an oily smell about him and scarred knuckles. No lord, for sure, but an underling. They decided on a groat and two cups of ale for her (not a bad price, which was what she was hoping for with the tourney).

But before she disappeared she turned to him and carefully mouthed the words, “don’t forget”.

* * *

 

The sky seemed full with hundreds of animals. They played like shadows on the clouds, and Gendry stood a while amidst the crowds watching and studying them. He knew the King’s house, of course, and the Lannister one, but there were so many Gendry began to wonder how people remembered them all.

He was stood beside a tent with a flag of crow that in the wind looked like it was doing battle with three grey moths. Around him he heard snatches of songs he knew, and he felt every muscle twinge with excitement as he watched men sheath longswords (in Flea Bottom one only saw daggers, and when one did you had to be very afraid) and polish helmets. He entertained the idea of asking one of the lords if he could run away in service to them, but he knew they wouldn’t want him because he was too thin and didn’t know his letters.

He began looking for the wine, but he was too afraid to sneak into the tents. He already he felt the bite of the rope around his neck. He took in a nervous breath. The treasure his mother held was too dear to pass by. He fanned out his fingers and placed it against the canvas, running it to the very bottom and just beginning to lift it when—

“Why hello, little one.” A voice sounded out. Gendry snapped straight and looked into the face of the speaker. The man was smiling knowingly, hands resting inside his silken sleeves, and Gendry could catch the smell of flowers in the air.

He felt the rope tighter than ever now, so tight around his throat that he could not speak, only make little gasps for air.

“No need to be alarmed.” The man said, smiling again. His voice was feather-soft and Gendry struggled to hear it. “I suppose you’ve gotten lost, hm? Such a large tourney we have this year.”

Gendry nodded politely.

“I suppose you’re looking for your tent and master.” He quirked his head. “Tell me the name and I’ll get you on your way.”

Panic stricken, Gendry wildly flew out his arm to point at a sigil- any sigil- still too afraid to speak. And above them rode a pure black stag to which he pointed. The man gave out a good, healthy, but sly chuckle; Gendry felt the tips of his ears burn.

“Strange.” The man said, still laughing a little. “I was certain I knew every servant of House Baratheon, down to the last kitchen boy. I don’t suppose you have a name?”

The name flew out of his lips instantly, and he hated himself for it. “Florian.”

The man laughed, but was polite enough to hide his mouth with his sleeves. Gendry’s eyes studied the way the silk shimmered and seemed to change with every movement. He was desperate to feel it for a moment, but he didn’t want to try the man’s temper.

“Florian, I see…” The man said, very slowly. “A suitable name for such a brave boy, especially one trying to steal from Ronnet Corrington.”

Gendry could not speak, but decided he would not cry, not even as the rope looped around his neck and people cheered for his death. He looked to the floor. He wasn’t even wearing shoes – his feet were streaked and caked with mud, and you could see his ribs – and here a silk man stood, seeing him in all his shame.

“What is it you were searching for?” The man asked.

Gendry lifted his head up a little. “A bottle of Dornish red for my mother.”

The man clicked his tongue. “Is that all, hm? A bottle of wine?”

Gendry nodded. “I don’t like stealing, m’lord.” He said. “I never have before, honest.”

The man stood a while, still. The air grew heavier and heavier, and Gendry began to feel sick with the smell of flowers as it mixed in which the smell of steel, of mud and of wine. He wondered if he should pray to the Seven, but he couldn’t think of the right words, only a bare desperate plea from within him.

“Ah, you.” The man said, clicking his fingers. “Give me that wine. Oh, and this as well.”

Gendry’s head began to feel light. He finally looked upwards. The man held in his hand a bottle of wine and a pastry and a confused looking squire with an empty tray by his side. He held the wine and pastry out to Gendry, who didn’t dare move his arms.

“They’re yours’.” The man smiled. Gendry took both quickly, his teeth instantly tearing into the pastry. His mouth became flooded with the unfamiliar taste of rich meat and spices. His head became even dizzier. He stuffed itself down himself as quickly as he could, and his stomach winced in agony at the unfamiliarity of it, and by the end he had to fight the urge to retch. The man watched him curiously, perhaps a little sadly.

“Thank you, m’lord.” He said, finally. “Thank you so much.”

The man smiled and nodded. “Now, in exchange, why not tell me your real name, hm?”

Gendry wiped his mouth and licked the fat around his lips. “Gendry, m’lord. I don’t have a last name.”

The man hummed and stood up straight. Gendry was too busy examining the bottle and too giddy and flush with the warmth of the food and the knowledge that soon he would know his father’s name to notice the strange look in the man’s eyes.

The man stood beside Gendry and watched him study the bottle. “A delicious wine, to be sure.” He locked his hands together and rested them on his stomach. His words became slower, more considered, than they were before. “And why, may I ask, does your mother want this so terribly?”

Gendry’s eyes were still focussed on the green tint of the glass and the way it made the drink within look like pure liquid inky black. “My mother said…” He began. The man listened. “That with this, she’ll finally tell me my father’s name.”

He waited for his mother at the edge of the tourney field as evening settled in, but she did not come. Gendry had spent the day wandering around, getting lost among the maze of tents, even managed to scrape some more food when the men were drunk and generous. There were even puppet shows with figures he recognised from his mother’s songs. He also saw the King, who was slower and less handsome than the songs and tales described. The knights and lords didn’t look much like how they sounded in songs. Some had rotten teeth and wine dribbling onto their chins and could barely hold a sword.

He waited until the moon arose and then decided to go home. His mother always returned. The streets of King’s Landing became narrower with the crowds of people. The scent of roasted meat and wine and boiled leather filled the air and made Gendry feel a bit ill. He began scaling the roofs - all Flea Bottom children are excellent at navigating the roofs of King’s Landing - where the air was clearer, and Gendry felt as tall and as powerful as a giant.

That night he slept well, and dreamed good dreams.

* * *

 

She leant against the tree trunk and chewed on a wad of sourleaf she just pocketed, smiling. She felt exhausted and sore but the weight of the coins made her content. The moon was high and bright and silvered the trees. She spat out the sourleaf and decided to go home – no more business for her tonight, she decided – she was too cold and too thirsty.

She began to walk away when she heard the sound of the forest floor being disturbed. A figure; tall and lean, and barely visible; approached her.

“How much?” He asked. She couldn’t hear any clear accent in his voice, which was strange. In the still forest air the voice seemed to float.

“Sorry my love, off for tonight. Come find me here tomorrow.” She said, resuming her steps.

“I’ll give you a stag.” The voice announced. She stopped and turned around.

“Really?” Her teeth – still white as pearls – flashed smiling in the dark.

“Yes.”

“Let’s see it then.” She said. He held the coin between his fingers, and in the dim she had to use her thumb to feel for the markings. The man didn’t smell too bad, either: in fact he smelt fresh and clean, and she could feel he had soft hands.

“All right then.” She sighed, placing her back against the tree. “But quickly.”

* * *

 

A squire found her the next day twisted in the roots of an old tree. Her neck was patterned with bruises as colourful as violets, and her coin purse was missing. Men came to inspect the body, but looked on passively: it was a common enough crime, and she was a common enough whore. Only some of the other girls talked of the news, catching snatches of gossip and speculation in between customers. It was one of them who told the Septon and the Silent Sisters where to find the boy.

Gendry watched as the Silent Sisters prepared the body later that day. In the candlelight he could make out the profiles of their faces now and again. They seemed very still, except for the slow, expert movements of their hands. Gendry wondered if they breathed at all, or if their eyes were unaccustomed to daylight and their noses to the smell of sweet things. The room smelt stale, like no air had ever or would ever travel through it. Gendry was glad to leave it when someone told him it was time to leave.

Though it was a common grave she was buried in Gendry still stood beside it with the Dornish Red in his hand. He had once heard that noble lords toasted their dead with wine and mead. He knew his mother wasn’t a noble lady, or a particularly nice one, but he still felt like he should watch her for a while. He uncorked the wine and poured it on the ground, whispering her name as he did. After a while he knew it was time to leave, because the dark was settling in and he needed to find somewhere to sleep for the night.

* * *

 

At the doorway of his old home a stranger stood. He had thick arms and a frown in his eyes. He looked down at Gendry, who was too tired to feel suspicious of any danger.

“You’re thin.” He said. Gendry said nothing in response. “But big, aren’t you?” Gendry shrugged. He had always actually felt exceptionally small on the inside, especially now. “Heard you lost your mother.”

Gendry still said nothing.

“Quiet, eh? That might prove good. You don’t want an apprentice who backchats.” He snorted.

He bought the boy a bowl of brown and they sat on the steps of his shop. He showed Gendry the bellows, the tools, the half finished pieces of armour. There was even a helmet in the shape of a gruesome, snarling dog. Gendry ran his hands over it, fascinated by the smooth shape of the teeth and the wrinkles of its nose.

“Who will we be making armour for?” He asked.

Tobho laughed. “Why, lords and sers and what have you, of course.”

Gendry felt a little disappointed with that.

“I hope you know how lucky you are, this is the best shop in the Street of Steel, it is. It’s not anyone I take for an apprentice.” He began to fill a tub with hot water. “Trained in Qohor, you know. I can even work with Valyrian steel.” Gendry’s fingers brushed along the edges of the tools that hung on the wall. “You’ll do what I tell you, lad. You’ll be polite to anyone who comes in, especially if they smell of money.” He stood. “Speaking of smell, get in there lad.” He motioned to the tub. “You smell awful.”

That night Gendry listened to the hissing and groaning of the bellows and wondered whether his mother was in the Seven Hells, which every boy knew burned with an eternal fire that blistered your skin and boiled your eyes right out of your sockets. The red shadow of the bellows seemed to creep closer and closer to his door. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to sleep.

He dreamt that he was in a meadow, or what he imagined a meadow to look like. The grass was a soft green and there were butterflies that chased each other. They had wings so colourful it almost hurt Gendry’s eyes. The air was spiced with the smell of fresh pastry and soap and he could hear his mother’s voice faintly in the air, singing about Gendry’s heroes. The land stretched on forever and he was alone, and safe.

He closed his eyes. Suddenly he felt a hot rush of breath on his face. Above him were two glassy black eyes. Gendry stood up slowly, but he didn’t feel afraid, as if he knew what he would find. A bull was laid beside him, nibbling at the grass. He ran his hand along the bull’s neck he knew this was how silk felt. In the sunlight it seemed almost fluid as it dappled in the light.

Gendry moved forward and rested his head on the snout of the bull who began to softly dig at his hair with nibbling teeth. A great warmth overcame Gendry as he shut his eyes and listened to the sound of the bull’s slow, comforting breaths.

Gendry awoke with a slow smile and got dressed in clothes fresher and better than he had ever had before. Tobho was waiting for him in the workshop. In his belt a small, freshly forged hammer hung loose. He pressed it into Gendry’s hands.

“Now boy.” He said. “Begin.”

 


End file.
